How Not To Market Gaming Accessories

Actual poster at a CES Booth

Sometimes you just have to wonder why nobody stood up at the marketing meeting and said "No." Or maybe "Have you lost your wits?" Apparently no one did for this company that makes gaming mice and gaming keyboards. Somehow they though that this slogan would appeal to those crazy Americans.

Really, guys (I presume guys; women usually don't seem to stoop to this marketing level of juvenilia), what the hell were you thinking? Looking at this (which is also the backdrop image for the booth, by the way) I have no idea what they're marketing or why I should care. Features? Benefits? Nope, not there. Odd image of a cat outline with an American flag design over it? Sure, that's there. Whatever that means. And did I miss something or did the Germans actually invade America in World War II? I thought they never got here... I must not know as much history as I thought. Of course, countries that did have legions of German "tourists" during World War II don't exactly have fond memories of the time period.

Save the lame jokes for when you're at the hofbrau knocking back some lager. When you're marketing, try to at least point to the product or service, and maybe even hint at a benefit or two.

Miyamoto Retiring?

This guy doesn't look ready to retire.

A rollup of stories from IndustryGamers this week, as featured on Kotaku can be found here. There's been a lot going on, and perhaps the most interesting flap has been over an interview that Wired conducted with Nintendo's star designer Shigeru Miyamoto, where he talks about retiring. Of course Nintendo, no doubt worried about their stock price, rushed to say he's not really resigning. I think the truth probably is Miyamoto wants to shift his responsibilities some, and maybe not "retire" in the Western sense of the word (as in not work any more), but maybe change from overseeing development efforts to being more hands-on.

Somehow Nintendo would like to get Miyamoto to sprinkle his magic dust over every title they do, or at least make investors think that he does.

Although I think what is really important is to get a whole crop of designers who can do what Miyamoto does, or at least approximate it. If he could train up some developers, that would be hugely useful to Nintendo. I'm not sure if that;s even possible, though, but it's certainly worth a try.

This Week In The Business

If only making money from games was this simple.

My son rightly pointed out I should link to this post on Kotaku, which rolls up a number of the top stories on IndustryGamers for the week. It's a good overview on the important stories in the game business for the week.

Nintendo Enables Paid DLC

Here's a story that I've just posted to IndustryGamers.com, about how Nintendo will be enabling developers to put DLC online in the 3DS eShop and actually charge customers money for it. This is apparently something Nintendo is doing because developers have asked for it, not because the Big N particularly thinks they should charge for DLC. I'm sure gamers everywhere cheer at the thought of free content, especially more free content for games they've already purchased. But is this really a good idea, ultimately, for a business?

After all, the biggest change in smartphone games is the shift to free-to-play, going form only 12% of smartphone games to a project 92% of them in a couple of years from now. If the games are free, how will they make money? Sale of virtual goods... AKA, paid DLC in another guise. If that's the right path in smartphones, is it necessarily the right path for consoles?

Well, maybe, maybe not. I think part of the reason (a big part) that free-to-play (F2P) is taking over smartphone games is that there are so damn many games out there it's hard to get people to commit to buying one. If it's free, then people have one less barrier to trying it out, and then if they like it they might spend money on buying things for it. So F2P is a way to encourage discovery. On a platform like the 3DS, though, there are very few games (compared to smartphones, orders of magnitude fewer), so buyers aren't as overwhelmed... and therefore maybe they don't need to be enticed by free games to make a buying decision.

I see that counter-argument, but I think the bigger picture for consumers is that they see "Hey, I can get a smartphone and have thousands of free games" which may lead them away from choosing a dedicated gaming handheld. Oh, the hardcore gamers will see the advantages of the dedicated handheld, but that audience isn't very big compared to the size of the smartphone buying audience. The comparison between $30 games on a 3DS and free or $1.99 games on the smartphone isn't helping dedicated handheld sales at all.

The real tough part is that making a game F2P means fundamental design changes; you can't just take any old game and make it F2P and expect it to work properly. And many $30 games aren't really worth the full price, especially when it's easy to find them used. I think games have sustained really high prices for a very long time, but the party is rapidly coming to a close. For every Call of Duty or Skyrim, there's dozens of games that don't even cover their development and marketing costs.

I think Nintendo's fighting a rearguard action here, but the industry as a whole is inexorably moving to lower game prices up front (in many cases, free) and looking to make their money after the initial game acquisition. Companies are trying like hell to increase customer engagement with game brands, using Facebook and multiple tools to keep you continuously interested in their game. Companies are racing towards this goal of comprehensive, multiplatform brand engagement, but I'm not sure what exactly they'll find at the end of the race.

2011 has been a year of big changes, but 2012 may be even bigger.

Things Are Changing

I just posted an interview on IndustryGamers.com with Warren Spector, where he talks about how things have been changing in the game business. Check it out here. I was thinking of calling it When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth, but thought better of it.

I'll be interviewing other Game Industry Legends in the coming weeks, like Richard Garriott and Sid Meier. It's interesting to compare and contrast their thoughts about the vast changes taking place in the game business these days.

Apologies to my audience here, but the exigencies of IndustryGamers have kept me hopping. I hope to get back to regular posting here soon.

Book Publishing 2.0 Emerging

As if we needed any more evidence, Kobo has announced it's signing deals directly with author, just like Amazon. It's as Amazon exec Russell Grandinetti told the New York Times recently:

 "[T]he only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader. Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity."


Which is something Joe Konrath and others have been saying for a while. It's a great time to be an author, especially if you have some understanding of business and marketing. Some authors are lost in this brave new world without a publisher to take care of everything for them, no matter how ineptly that might take place. I've heard one best-selling author describe how she just writes a huge number of pages, and then her editor turns it into a novel. (One of the many unsung editors who deserve far more credit than they ever get.) The author sounded like she really couldn't be bothered with figuring out how to tighten up her work, put it in order, make it make sense... I think that sort of author, who is deeply reliant on a publisher's help, is going to struggle without a publisher.

Most authors are certainly going to need a graphic artist to design a cover, develop formatting and such; an editor to at least find typos, and probably to help refine their writing; technical help in preparing their books for various electronic platforms; business and marketing advice on banking, company structure, how and where to market, and a zillion other things. Certainly some authors are familiar with some or all of this; some may even be able to do a pretty good job of all those things. Most will need to find people to help them with some or all of these tasks, and usually for a flat fee. These are all functions that publishers took care of, but they took an enormous percentage of sales to do all that... which makes sense given that books then had a huge capital cost and inventory and shipping costs. All that has gone away with digital distribution, and even with print-on-demand. Bookstore and newsstand distribution is still the one area where the self-publisher can't go without a partner, and that may be a good reason to go the traditional route with a book... at least so you can attract attention to all those other books you are selling yourself digitally.

I'm also excited to see that authors are beginning to experiment with different lengths, and styles of publishing. Let's see those monthly pulp adventures return, the 90-page adventures of The Shadow and Doc Savage and countless others. The new magazine era is upon us, for digitally published content. Apple's new Newsstand app in iOS 5 is apparently causing huge jumps in sales for magazines. Which is great, because that may help magazines finally make the transition to digital.

It all means I'm going to have to make some time to work on the books I want to write...

New Way To Publish An Ebook

The online book publishing service Blurb is offering a way to publish collections of photos as an e-book for the iPad,  for only $1.99. If you're in downtown Manhattan, watch out for falling publishing executives. The end is near for traditional publishing.